Charles Dickens’ most famous holiday story was the 1843 publication,A Christmas Carol, but he was a prolific writer in the yuletide genre and a great contributor to many now-prevalent traditions of the holiday itself. In the year following the release ofA Christmas Carol, Dickens releasedThe Chimes: A Christmas Story of Some Bells That Rang an Old Year Out and a New Year In. This story combined his usual sympathy for the poor with the notion that we must always strive to live in nobler ways. In 1845 cameThe Cricket on the Hearth, a novella that, in its time, surpassed evenA Christmas Carolin popularity for stage productions. The years 1846 and 1848 respectively saw publishedThe Battle of LifeandThe Haunted Man and the Ghosts Bargain. Given this wealth of Christmas-themed works, it is no wonder that Dickens is sometime referred to as the man who invented Christmas.